10 Remarkable (and Free) WordPress Themes

The following post on great free WordPress Templates was written by Reese Spykerman from Design by Reese.

A search for free WordPress themes yields thousands of results, some dull or cluttered, some utilitarian, and many inspiring and beautiful. Numerous other well-designed WordPress themes are available to you, but these are 10 that stand out to me for various features including good usability, organization, attractive use of graphics, cross-genre appropriateness and even search engine optimization.

Many theme designers claim their code is search engine optimized (SEO), but Blix is one of the few that is created with SEO specifically in mind.

Blix’s code uses best practices more than the majority of other WordPress themes and is optimized for Google Adsense integration.

Blix is a good start if you aren’t consulting with an SEO and optimization is your primary concern when downloading a theme. A version with greater optimization is also available for sale. (Note: Michael Gray has great tips on further optimizing your WordPress blog for SEO.

Watch Out for Malicious Code

When downloading WordPress themes, keep in mind a lot of themes get redistributed without the original creator’s permission and are often modified with spyware or other malicious code. Check out the theme’s ìfooter.phpî file and look for code that looks garbled. A legitimate footer file will either be blank or have some html and php code in it. A hacked footer file has one long line of code that looks encrypted. Derek Punsalon has more info http://5thirtyone.com/archives/870 about issues with themes on 3rd-Party sites.

Modifying Credit Links in the Footer File

Sometimes the modifications are less overt: the footer file will be modified with spam-type credit links (stuffed with keywords to online banking, poker, prescriptions, etc). These can be edited as well and replaced with links of your choice or removed entirely. Before you remove a credit link that looks legitimate, see if the author has a license that requires the credit to remain.

Note from Darren: Of course blog design is a fairly subjective thing. I asked Reese to write this post as I get a lot of questions from readers wanting to know which WordPress theme they should choose for their blog and in the hope that this might highlight a few places to start (as well as some of the things to look for in other themes). Both Reese and I would love to hear your own suggestions on free WordPress Themes that you like also.

Problogger.net runs on the Genesis Framework

The Genesis Framework empowers you to quickly and easily build incredible websites with WordPress. Genesis provides the secure and search-engine-optimized foundation that takes WordPress to places you never thought it could go.

I’ve become very partial to Darren Hoyt’s Mimbo Magazine style. I do a lot of interviews and it allows me to keep my top stories available for as long as I want, while my smaller, daily posts filter through. I really like the photo option because I’m covering TV so it really helps.

@Justin Yes, when I was doing my research, I came across that list of 100. I didn’t look at it closely but am sure a couple of them on here are also on smashing’s list.

Some people have posted links to other great WP themes on here–that feedback is the coolest thing about this article. Thanks to all who gave links to some of their favorite themes–I saw a few in there that are inspiring to me as a designer.

I host a small conventional website for a local writers group that I’m involved with. The site has been sitting there for a few years and is in need of refreshing.

I’m thinking about switching from my conventional website to a blog site. When looking into this possibility I came across Magazine type blogs; I didn’t even know they existed and some of them really do look like standard sites. There are two templates I feel would serve me well.

While I don’t mind spending time getting something like this up and running this is my first venture into the world of WordPress and Blogging, I would appreciate a few comments on how much experience with WP does a person need to get a magazine type theme like I mentioned above up and running?

Is it a relatively straight-forward process or is it one that you really have to have some experience of WP before you begin?

Anyway thanks for your patience and any answers. Fell free to point me in the direction of magazine type blogs that you feel might be of interest to a Creative Writers Group.

I loooooove the Cleaker-21 WordPress theme, which I use on both my blogs. I just edited the css a little bit and edited the images to change the colors and made it more to my liking, but I really do love the Cleaker-21 theme. I have not found another wordpress theme that I really like as much.

Be advised! The guy who created the Jello Wala Mello theme sold his website to someone else and there is no more support for it! There is a support forum, but it is unmanaged and filled with spam! I didn’t find this out until I had already spent many hours customizing the theme. I love the theme but have some issues that I have no hope of getting resolved because the creator has left the planet.

This is beautiful, Darren. People would love to see their blogs in action with one of them. In the mean time, I would like to recommend the WordPress Premium theme. I adopted the theme recently for my blog. Here is the post on this theme change. I hope it will be a good read for other commenters here.

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this is a good list for blogger who creating blogs using worpress. I Specially thanks to problogger who provide this list, because few days ago i was surfing for worpress theme. now I got good theme from problooger list